


Immortality Isn't Always a Good Thing

by thescienceofsymmetry



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Body Horror, Doomed Timelines, Gen, God Tier, Sadstuck, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-02-05 12:02:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1817785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescienceofsymmetry/pseuds/thescienceofsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rose and Dave realize they are stuck in a doomed timeline, Dave goes to extreme measures to try to escape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Immortality Isn't Always a Good Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted for Bonus Round 2 in the HSWC.

"So this is it."

"Yes."

"Our timeline is doomed. We're doomed."

"You could certainly say so."

Dave looked up at Rose from where he was kneeling on a dusty cog in the Land of Heat and Clockwork. "We failed. We're stuck," Dave looked down at his god tier outfit and his voice broke, "and we can't even die to escape."

Rose sat down next to Dave. "No we can't," she said matter-of-factly.

"I won't live like this. I can't live like this. Not where in a timeline where we fail," Dave said with his head in his hands.

"And what are you going to do about that?" Rose asked. "What's done is done. We defeated our enemies but didn't win the game. After Jade and John died heroically you had to know this was going to happen. Honestly you should have accepted our fate by now." Rose looked down and started to swirl the dust by her feet into patterns.

Dave stood and drew his sword. "Well I haven't. And I won't," he said firmly.

"What do you mea-"

Rose's words were cut off with the sickening sound of metal meeting flesh and a sharp intake of breath. She spun around to see Dave standing with his sword through his chest, hands on the hilt.

"What are you doing?!" She yelled.

Dave collapsed, blood soaking his knight shirt.

"Only... way out..." he gasped.

"You know that isn't how this works," Rose said after scrambling to his side. Even as she said it, visions of what life would be like if it worked flashed through her brain. Her alone, forever wandering the worlds, her presence not enough to keep Dave from killing himself. Tears started to stream down her face. No, he couldn't leave her. This wasn't heroic or just. Please let it not be heroic or just.

After a few seconds Dave stopped breathing. Rose checked his pulse. It was gone. She yanked the sword out of his chest so he didn't have to come back to life with it still there. He was coming back, she knew it. Any moment now he would be healed and gasp back to her. A minute passed. Two. It felt like an eternity. Rose sat back and started to sob, more for herself than Dave.

"Fuck."

Rose snapped her head up to see Dave lifting his head to look at her.

"It didn't work," he breathed, and laid his head back down.

Rose's sobs turned into screeches as she began to yell, "YOU LEFT ME. YOU WERE GOING TO LEAVE ME ALONE IN THIS UNIVERSE FOREVER?!"

"Hey, I never said you couldn't follow!" Dave responded, sitting up.

"YOU KNOW THAT'S NOT SOMETHING I CAN DO," she screamed.

"Fine, I'll help," he said simply before picking up his sword, giving it a cocky twirl, and shoving it through Rose's chest.

Rose could only stare down in shock for a second. She fell back and breathed, "You're an asshole," before she died.

When Rose came back she felt a deep ache where she had been stabbed, but could find no hole in her skin or her clothing. Good ol' god tier outfits, she thought. Dave was laying there dead beside her, again.

"Fine. Have it your way," she growled to the corpse before yanking the sword back out of his body and flying away as fast as she could. After a few minutes she risked a glance behind her. There was no Dave to be seen following her. Cautiously, she began her flight back to where she left Dave. This can't be good, she thought.

Rose returned to find Dave jumping into the lava that made up the surface of his planet over and over. He just kept reappearing at the cog he jumped from like a video game character with infinite lives. It was sickening to watch, to see someone so desperate to die.

"Dave!" she called.

Dave looked up at her, about to jump again. "Oh, I thought you gave up on me! Have you come to your senses yet?" He asked before executing a perfect swan dive into the lava below.

"I was going to ask you that, but you obviously haven't," she said when he reappeared. "Why do you keep doing that when it obviously isn't working?"

"Well I thought maybe, if I kept trying, the system, the gods, whatever, will decide that I'm not giving up. That it would be just for me to die if that's how I'm going to spend my life," Dave answered calmly, before jumping again. Rose was disturbed to hear a slight slur to his words, as if his mouth wasn't working properly.

"Dave, stop, we have to talk about the consequences if that isn't how this turns out," she said when he popped back into existence. 

"No." Another jump.

"Think about it, we can't die, but don't you have to think this will take a toll on you somehow?! Even though we’re immortal we’re still not supposed to die over and over, it messes with us!" Rose pleaded.

"Doesn't matter." Splash.

"Dave this is sick and wrong, and you know it," Rose said.

This time he turned toward her. "Is it?! Is it really? Because I think what's really sick is you trying to keep me here! Obviously you're trying to guilt me into staying because you're too much of a coward to follow me!" Dave was yelling wildly, with budging eyes like a madman. It seemed like his shades had disappeared along with his calm facade. That isn't what really bothered Rose though, it was that it looked like his face was slightly drooping, his right cheekbone seemingly melted lower on his face. He jumped again before she could respond.

"Dave! You have to stop! Look at yourself. This is hurting you!" Rose begged. He paused and considered before nodding. Before Rose could even offer him a mirror, he had used his time powers to make another version of himself. Old Dave would have never used his powers for something as simple as that. Now he didn't care how many dead Daves there were. He stared at himself, now with bottom eyelids drooping to reveal pink insides and pupils blown to nearly block out the iris.

"Looks fine to me," he said. This jump was a double.

Rose was at a complete loss. He wouldn't listen to reason. He couldn't see his own destruction when it was literally staring back at him. So she let him jump.

An hour passed.

Dave started to lose his shape, his arms drooping toward the ground, head sliding down his neck. Rose was glad he always faced away from her so she didn't have to see the monster he was becoming.

A day passed.

Dave wasn't even human shaped anymore. His skin had changed color to match that of his god tier uniform. Rose doubted he could speak to her, even if he wanted to.

Time had no meaning to them or the world, so it became difficult to tell how much time had passed. The planet was covered in eternal dusk and the only movement was Dave jumping. The only sound was his impact in the lava.

Rose tried to talk to him again. She chatted idly, babbled like everything was normal, like he might turn around and be her Dave again. Like he could go back to being like her little brother. Then she begged for him to come back. Then she screamed her throat raw, cursing him, cursing the game, cursing gods and fate and life itself. Surely this couldn't be happening. This thing worse than a nightmare couldn't be real.

Where Dave had been there was just a mass of tendrils with a deep red core. A mass that kept jumping. Over and over and over, growing deeper and redder with each reappearance.

Rose forgot what she was counting.

The mass spoke to her. It screamed. It whispered. It was the farthest thing from Dave she could imagine. But there it was in his place, continuing to jump like he had. Rose was now thankful for each jump, as it meant a few seconds without it there.

Rose didn't even think about leaving. Now she had to stay, but she didn't know if it was by her will or Dave's. 

She realized she was holding his sword. His most beloved weapon, maybe the thing he cared more about than any other possession. She should have known from the start what was happening when he didn't bother to take it back.

Centuries passed. Eons. Rose didn't know where the mass ended anymore. It had continued to expand outward to envelop her and his world. She couldn't tell if she was in it or if it was the new reality entirely. Somehow it continued to kill itself.

It was all she saw. It was all she thought about. At one point she realized she wasn't sitting on the dusty cog anymore. She didn't care.

It warped her mind, twisted her memories. It was all that she was or had been before. She knew nothing else.

More time passed. The mass continued to rip itself apart.

Then she noticed it. The jumps had stopped, the death was over. Rose heard Dave's voice. At first it was faint, then it grew stronger and stronger with each second. It was garbled, unintelligible, but it was him.

She realized she should look up, and there he was. Dave was the same distance from her as he had been before each jump. He was just a form slightly darker than the rest of everything she could see, but it was him.

She stood up and walked over to the silhouette. Without thought, she wrapped her arms around it. It was cold and hard, but it was him.

"You know what you have to do," came a voice sounding infinitely old and weak, but it was him.

Rose took his sword in both hands and plunged it into the silhouette as hard as she could. The next instant everything was gone. No noise, no blackness, just nothing. Then she opened her eyes and saw she was back on LOHAC, but it was different. John and Jade were there, and she felt good for the first time in such a long time. She had her memories back; her thoughts were clear. But not everything was right yet. She turned to see Dave, back to normal and standing back where they first realized their fate.

"So I guess I got just and you got heroic, huh?" he said wearily.

Rose wrapped him in her arms again and heard a very un-Dave-like sob, but it was him.


End file.
